An Education and Communication Outpost from an Athletic Trainer's Perspective

I don’t know if many of you were able to watch the USC/Utah football game last night but there was a very disturbing incident that had to deal with a head injury.

I don’t want to pirate the link from SB Nation so CLICK HERE to see the .gif of the hit and aftermath (its important to my commentary). So to me, Woods gets hit in the head, immediately displays a Fencing Response, looks “lifeless” then returns to his feet only to stumble and eventually fall flat on his face – I seriously doubt he was drinking at the moment.

Then, unbelievably this happens;

According to reporters in the press box, Woods was then seen trying to convince USC trainers he’s up for returning to the field immediately. The Trojans took the field in Utes territory with Woods back in — Samantha Steele reported Woods went through a complete concussion test, but is “good to go.”

How in the world does a high level college football medical staff completely miss this? How is he even allowed to return, heck the officials were looking right at him on his face plant. Did I mention that when he got up from the “drunken stooper” he was walking to the wrong bench?

This is not good people… Granted I was not down there to evaluate him, but the signs CLEARLY indicated a head trauma. If you were watching the St. Louis Rams game Quinten Mikell had a similar incident, although he was KO’ed and did not return.

I will be very interested to see what the reasoning was behind putting him back in the game, other than “he is our best player”.

9 thoughts on “Robert “Woodsgate” in Utah”

lifeafterthegameOctober 5, 2012 / 14:16

I am glad I was not awake to see this…when I see incidences like this it simply infuriates me. Living with PCS is no joke. I just wish that somehow someway athletes knew that being the best at what you do is only for a moment, and the repercussions of head injuries last a lifetime.

There is a huge problem in The Head-Neck Injury World and that is the simple fact that the testing is inadequate and the treatment is non-existent.
Nearly every day we see another concussion injury patient that has been to the top doctors and clinics with no real answers as to what is going on or any potential assistance other than to rest and take drugs.
Who suffers from this? The athlete of course and it’s not their fault.
There is a way to locate the cause of the problem and to correct it without harmful drugs or surgery. I know this because I help concussed athletes to get their lives back.

Ho-ly smokes! That’s amazingly blatant. How can they justify that? Your call on the fencing response is spot-on. It’s brief, but it’s there. Instead of just relying on a sideline test, staff could easily use tape to spot signs like this — fencing response: check… lying lifeless on the ground: check… stumbling into a face-plant: check… being so disoriented you head for the wrong sideline: check. There are some pretty obvious indicators that get caught on film that people could reference later, just in case the trainer/doc is not paying attention at the right moment. My next question is — where were his teammates in this? Did any of them speak up on his behalf — or were they reluctant to, because that might be taken the wrong way?

Why is an obvious loss of consciousness not an automatic disqualification from return to play? Will the USC medical staff (or any of the countless others that do the same thing by returning a star player to the field) say those responses on the field don’t indicate a concussion? They would have to say their sideline questions are more definitive than a fencing response, LOC, vestibular disruption (i.e. stumbling face first into the ground), vision disruption (woods stated that he couldn’t see after the hit), and disorientation (unless running to the wrong bench is part of the gameplan).

As an ATC I don’t know how to defend our high profile members (NFL, Div 1) when they obviously disregard their medical ethics based on the level of importance of the player in question. How can our national organization not speak up about blatant disregard for position statements and best practice guidelines? They make it harder to defend the stance that ATCs should be evaluating head injuries when they let these situations happen. Yes it make be a small percentage of the incidents when this happens, but the high visibility makes it all that more important to get it right.

The NCAA needs to adopt a rule similar to the one put into place in the NFL last year that an ATC unaffiliated with either team should be in the booth to observe concussive symptoms.

brokenbrilliant, although there was helmet to helmet contact, Woods was actually the one who initiated the contact as a blocker, and he also would not in that situation be considered a “defenseless” player, so there is no warrant for penalty on either player.

The college game needs to come under more serious scrutiny, imo. I follow college football much more than the NFL, and this has happened several times already this year. The Utah/USC game…..UNC/Wake Forest (UNC’s QB was knocked out cold….came back in the game later on), MIchigan State/Eastern Michigan, and just this past weekend, WVU/Texas. And those are just off the top of my head. No oversight in the college game, as far as I can tell, and it’s sending a terrible message.

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